Katy Payne is the kind of person I love to interview. For starters, she is warm and delightful, wise and instructive, about things I had never pondered before. And though eminent in her field of “acoustic biology,” she is not a famous name.

She is a practicing Quaker and a student of the spiritual philosophy of the 20th-century, Greek-Armenian philosopher Gurdjieff, who taught self-awareness and openness to reality. The spirituality she reveals during our conversation derives its passion directly from life — and from her rare, intimate experience of usually hidden slices of the natural world.